Forged Legacy

“Congrats, Dad,” Harvey said as he finished reading all his new skills.

“Thanks! It feels good catching up to you guys. I was getting tired of waiting while the two of you kept getting stronger every day.”

Tyler gave their Mom a snarky grin. “Now Dad can go get painted by Lily.” Their mother had heard all about the joys of being anointed, and she wasn’t excited about the same being done to her husband. She knew it had to happen eventually, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.

“I think I’m going to wait a while on that. Anointing my weave to E-Grade when I just barely reached F-Grade doesn’t seem like the best idea.”

Cassandra, Eleanor, and Max all went back to class while Steve met with the instructor who’d led the ceremony to document his new skills. Harvey had tried to convince him not to, but Steve just waved him off. He figured that the angels would find out sooner or later since he wasn’t going to hide his skills in a fight, so he might as well let the rest of humanity benefit. Not wanting to argue and fearing they’d get yanked into a classroom by their mother, Harvey and Tyler left the church and walked back home.

“What are your plans?” Harvey asked.

Tyler shrugged, not looking up from the rock he was kicking down the asphalt. “Go for a run? I don’t know. I’m already feeling a lot better from finishing my weave, but I don’t really have anything to do now that we’re not allowed to fight.”

Harvey knew the struggle. At least he had a profession to keep him busy, but he was still itching to get out of the house and flex his muscles. Tyler also had plenty to work on, namely learning how to use his bat as a weapon instead of sporting equipment, but there wasn’t anyone to teach him. The angels were largely avoiding combat training, and it wasn’t like he could just find some good tutorial videos on the internet.

[We could always take him with us when we start sneaking out,] Julius ventured.

No. His fights are all up close and personal, and you can’t really hide that lightning skill. I’m worried about getting caught, and I’ll be using a silenced sniper to shoot demons from hundreds of yards away.

“Sorry, man. It really sucks that they’ve got us locked down like this, but hopefully the war will be over soon, and we can get back to doing our own thing,” Harvey sighed.

“Are you sure about that? Who’s to say Brutus won’t keep us on house arrest back home?”

“If he tries, we’ll just leave. If he tries to stop me, I’ll put a bullet in his knee.”

Tyler winced, glancing up at the bell tower where stone gargoyles stood watch over the neighborhood. Harvey couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw one’s eyes dart away when he looked up at it. The urge to shrink away like he’d just gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar pulled at him, but instead he gave the gargoyle the middle finger. “We’re people, not pets.”

Tyler picked up the pace, not saying anything until they got back to the house. “I’m going to check out what kind of weights I can buy from John’s shop.”

“Need me to spot you some merit? Maybe you can find one of those old P90X DVDs. I think those were all about training with body weight and stuff around the house.”

“Ew, what are you, 50? I’m not doing prison workouts,” Tyler scoffed.

P90X isn’t that old, is it?

[The only reason you know what it is was because the call-now advertisements that played while you watched cartoons.]

Shrugging, Harvey made his way to the garage. Like his brother had said, he was already feeling around 70% even after the drain of evolving his weave the day before. That wasn’t good enough for him to try and sneak his way onto the battlefield, but he could get to work on some of his crafting projects.

He started with the alchemy tools Lily asked for. Cash bought him all the materials he needed, and Lily had provided detailed plans that made things simple. Most of his blacksmithing projects made him feel like he was on one of those hour-long cooking competition shows. Always racing the clock while trying to figure out how to incorporate whatever random ingredient got tossed into his basket in a way that would impress the judges. Except instead of a timer on the wall, the clock he was racing was the start of the next battle, the wacky ingredients were magical metals and monster parts, and impressing the judges was finding innovative ways to kill a demon. Forging the alchemy tools was more like baking. All he had to do was follow the recipe, and he probably wouldn’t mess it up too badly.

The rest of the family got home by the time he took his first break, and he made sure to get Eleanor’s measurements before going back into his workshop. Forging a set of G-Grade armor for her wouldn’t net him much essence, but making her a set of simple wands would be great practice for his own attempts at homegrown magic.

Finishing Lily’s commission only took two days, and the plethora of new creation bonuses got him all three Profession levels he needed to reach Level 65 and his next skill. He’d heard nothing from Cash or Celeste about how things were going on the war front, but nothing had changed on the quest screen. For all he knew, they could be days or weeks away from killing the next lieutenant. What he did know was that killing a third and gaining an even bigger lead would spell the end of the war, and Harvey needed to get a few more Class levels before that happened.

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Are you sure we can’t just bribe a few guards to keep their mouths shut? Won’t it be worse if we get caught trying to fly over the wall?

[But then we can’t call it Operation Iron Ghost.]

We were never going to call it that anyway.

[Why not? You’re sneaking out of a military camp where you’re being forced to make weapons against your will using jet boots! That’s basically the start of Iron Man!]

The pair were arguing as Harvey walked over to the church where he hoped to get in, use the Loom, and get out without having to talk to anyone. It was still early in the afternoon, and the plan was to take a long nap before jumping over the wall and finding a place to camp out in the rubble until the fighting started.

Ok, first of all, nobody’s forcing me to build weapons for them. I actually think they’d prefer I stop since the only place for me to test them is in the middle of the street. Second, they’re not jet boots. I can have Booster shoot from anywhere.

[That may be true, but we both know exactly why you made that skill.]

The angel sitting at the reception desk looked up when he walked through the door, but got back to her book when she saw it was him. Harvey silently thanked her and made his way to the Loom, finding the chapel blissfully empty. Letting the rainbow haze envelop him, he got to work on his fourth F-Grade Profession skill.

He and Julius had already gone over their plans for this one back before they made Cognitive Crucible. Harvey already had the tools he’d need to be a one-man factory. Cognitive Crucible helped him draw up the plans, Echo Forge let him conjure blank samples to work on, and Adaptive Inscription let him test his theories with a few drops of ink.

Now he just needed a way to top up his ink supply.

The problem with ink made from powerful materials is that it’s hard to replicate. His Prophet’s Suffering Ink, the first Legendary creation, needed the bones of a thanefire drake and the Imprint of a terrified man turned undead prophet. Harvey might be able to get his hands on some more bones if he tried hard enough, but the Imprint was one of one. Even if he killed a hundred more Necrolord Prophets, he might not find someone with the right legacy to recreate his ink. Not to mention, the idea of becoming the kind of person who would kill a hundred Necrolord Prophets just to make a strong bullet disgusted him. He could make his ink stretch by only using it on permanent inscriptions, but that meant he could never use Adaptive Inscription or his Inkbound Ordnance skills.

No, he needed a way to replicate ink he’d already created without having to use more of the original ingredients. Something like Echo Forge that created temporary copies could help a little, but he thought he could do better.

Ever since Cash had explained Genesis Matter and the Protean Foundry to him, he’d wanted to find a way to do the same with his own powerset. The fact that living, breathing creatures could be born of pure essence with the proper knowledge showed just how far his path of mastering all resonances could take him. Now that the power of genesis matter was flowing within his own Protean Weave, he was ready to take the first step.

The first component to enter his prospective skill was his Architect of the Veil’s End Imprint. There was an argument that adding Guardian of the Gilded Return might lead to a skill that imbued life into his creations or adding Tempered Heart would make them more durable, but Harvey wanted to start simple. Perfect essence replication was already a big ask, and he didn’t think F-Grade was the time to ask for godlike powers of creation.

Next, he added his final anointment, where the essence inside his weave cycled through dozens of resonances at once. If the point of his path was not limiting himself to a single resonance, he needed his Profession skills to be able to handle whatever strange materials he decided to work with. He’d built a collection of elemental inks and a handful of more esoteric bottles like his Insatiable and Starving Swarm inks in a matter of weeks. He couldn’t wait to see what he had in a year.

Finally, he added his three most intricate refinements to date. First came the experience creating the Prophet’s Suffering Ink, then turning Varek’s Imprint into Insatiable Ink, and ending with breaking Famine’s staff down into Starving Swarm Ink. Those were the three bottles he’d have the hardest time replicating, and he hoped the Loom would give him the ability to make more using his genesis matter-infused essence.

Once he was sure he’d found the best combination he could get, he pushed his memories into the Loom. Just like when he created Adaptive Inscription, almost every spool let out a short length of thread, but instead of forming another bottle of rainbow ink, the thread wove into the image of three rings of crystal runes orbiting a single drop suspended in the center. The sigil floated off the loom and settled on his lower back. As the rainbow haze gave way to the chapel, he pulled up the description.